Does your company have a vision and mission? It certainly should so that everyone knows where
the company is headed and why.

Do the goals of your employees compliment the corporate goals? If not, you are probably
experiencing set backs in achieving the business goals established.

Before employee performance appraisal planning and goal setting takes place, each employee should have available and readily at hand the
goals of the business for the next five years.

Whether it is to increase profitability, to break into a new market, to develop products, or
whatever the goal may be, employee performance goals should compliment the overall goals of the business.

The employees must understand the objectives of the organization to be able to set specific,
measurable, actionable, realistic and tangible (SMART) goals for themselves.

Many different processes support the organization's objectives.

It may at first appear difficult to tie a process to the company's objectives, but if you
look at the process closely, it must support one of the company objectives or it would not be a process that is performed by the organization.

After all, an organization will not set an objective to improve the time it takes to make
widgets is they are, in fact, building fire trucks!

Somehow the processes and tasks performed by every employee must support the objectives of the
business as a whole.

Once goals are established which support the organization's overall performance, tie compensation programs directly to the behaviors that increase the performance of the corporation.

Having a six-month delay between employee performance appraisals and pay increases will reduce
the pay for performance effectiveness.

Pay increases and bonuses should come very soon after performance appraisals are
completed.

The key to this process is the each employee must feel empowered to achieve or exceed their goals.

Meaningful employee performance appraisals will more than pay for the time
and energy they require.